Modern Technology & The Production of ‘History’
For the most part in this text, I was either confused because I didn’t understand Trouillot’s phrasing or I felt I really didn’t know anything about the historical events he was using as examples for his argument. In any case, something I thought about a lot when reading this text was about the effects that social media could have on the portrayal and recording of current events. Trouillot focuses a lot on the role of the teller of history (whether they be narrating or chronicling the events). I wondered whether…read more
Silencing the Past
The first thing that struck me, even just as I was reading the preface, was Trouillot’s eloquent narrative (I’m not sure if that’s the right word) style. There’s a natural flow and a certain amount of grace in his writing that extremely captivating. I find that he’s a lot easier to follow than Hobbes, Plato […]
History is biased
Trouillot is very much like a story-teller. Throughout his book, I’ve noticed that he shifts from one writing style to another. In the beginning, he starts kind of in the middle of nowhere and jumps into a factual account of the Alamo. Then his story becomes a sort of discussion, where he distinguishes the many […]
Silencing The Past post
I felt a bit unsettled after the lecture on Silencing The Past. Having read the book, I-maybe naively- still considered the silences explained in the text to be a nearly extinct tool used only by historical narrators of the egocentric, imperialist past. I was not surprised by the notion of European glorification in historical narratives. […]
Silencing the Past – Race Politics and Historiography
Professor Krause’s lecture had a heavy focus on the potential inaccuracies of historiography, and how silences are deliberately introduced to paint a portrait of the past that suits somebody’s agenda. His examples mostly dealt with race politics and the relationship between whites and blacks as a dominator and submitter. I felt that a lot of […] Continue reading →
Silencing the Past
Whether it is because it’s the last book of the semester, or because of mere lack of understanding, I found Silencing the Past difficult to follow. Or perhaps it’s the repeated references to American history that is alien to me. But here goes. In Silencing the Past, Michael-Rolph Trouillot wrties about how historians write history, […] Continue reading →
Siding with the Underdog
Reading Trouillot and listening to today’s lecture brought me back to a time in my life where I had significantly less homework and significantly higher marks: high school. Ah, how I remember it! Like it was just last year I was roaming the halls and getting away with procrastination. Oh, wait! It was… Anyways, Silencing […]
Grimm is about right
To start: “Consider a monologue describing in sequence all of an individual’s recollections. It would sound as a meaningless cacophony even to the narrator.” (Trouillot 15) As I was reading Heart of Darkness, I came to realize that the whole book can be described (sort of) with this quote from Silencing the Past. I say […] Continue reading →
Before Paine, Hacking
Okay, so the title for this blog post doesn’t make sense. I feel like I haven’t been making many blogs posts on the texts we have been reading so… Before I talk about Paine, I want to talk about Hacking. Later I’ll be making another post about Fanon, though we read Black Skin, White Masks quite a […] Continue reading →
Gathered up
I put off this post because I haven’t found anything to say about the book. Well, I guess I can start with Freud. “Examine diligently, therefore, all the faculties of your soul: memory, understanding, and will. Examine with precision all your senses as well. . . . Examine, moreover, all your thoughts, every word you […] Continue reading →